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Joseph Part 4: Genesis 39:1-22
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Because here in this story, Joseph becomes the stand in for any person, every person who has ever been victimized by power. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information.
Speaker 1:Welcome today. My name is Jeremy, and it's really great to have you here this weekend. We don't take it for granted that you spend part of your weekend with us, so thank you for that. That said, we are right in the middle of a series on the character of Joseph. And today, we find ourselves sort of right in the heart of the story as Joseph begins his journey into and then up through the halls of power in Egypt.
Speaker 1:However, there are lots of twists and turns still ahead of us in this story. But first, I know that Halloween is coming up. My son is very excited about all this, the fact that people are just giving away candy. I remember trying to explain Halloween to him a couple years ago, and he was like, wait, who is giving away candy? Like, everyone that we know is giving away candy, and all I have to do is dress up like a superhero, which I would already do every day if you would let me.
Speaker 1:This is amazing. Well, the spirit of Joseph's Technicolor dream coat, I wanted to give you a couple last minute costume options just in case you are late to the party this year. However, keep in mind, there's only a couple days left, and so your options are going to be limited, and name brands might be hard to find. So here are a few of my favorite bargain costumes I found this week. Here's the always popular, Where's the Stripey Dude?
Speaker 1:Name redacted for copyright purposes, obviously. This is Hungry Rebel Girl, which I like, but I feel like they may have taken the name of that film a little bit too literally. Although, who knows? Maybe she was just hungry for that whole movie. Two more here.
Speaker 1:This is creepy husband, which is never a good look. So my advice is to stay away from that one. And then, of course, there's always a lad in a costume, which let's be honest, that feels like you're getting a little too close there. That that's too much. Actually, one more quick one here because I like this one.
Speaker 1:This is Cyberman or Padre, whatever you like. Because you can be from the matrix or a minister and basically those are the same thing anyway. Alright. Enough terrible jokes here. Let's take a look at where we are in the Joseph story.
Speaker 1:Because last week, we saw Joseph's brothers debating his murder and then eventually selling him into slavery. And this is where the story might seem to disconnect for us. Most of us have felt like murdering a sibling at some point. Sure. Of course we have.
Speaker 1:But very few of us have ever actually considered following through on something that evil. But I think there is a more subtle point here, and that is all of the ways that we can other someone that we don't like. And I may not have murdered a sibling, but I have, in moments I'm not proud of, refused to recognize the humanity I share with every single person I cross paths with. And yet, on the other side of that equation lives the fact that at some point, every one of us will be treated like the outsider. As I said last week, for some of us that's more pointed and more hurtful and that's hard and I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:But at the same time, part of what we see in the Joseph story as he becomes the kind of person who would welcome these same brothers back in, is that instead of closing our self off when we are hurt, there is always the option to heal well and to turn all of the ways that we have been excluded into welcome and embrace for those who need it the most. Now, that was last week. So let's pray, and then we'll jump right back in where we left off. Go ahead. We want to see your goodness that surrounds us at all times, To hear it and sense it and breathe it in all around us.
Speaker 1:Give us the courage and the patience, the trust to hold on to your voice in our hearts until we truly understand its call. And for those of us who feel like we haven't heard anything from you in a very long time, we pray that you would give us the courage to trust again, the awareness to notice you in even the smallest moments of grace. Remind us today that we are not forgotten, that we are not abandoned, that we are never left on our own even when the circumstances feel desperate. Help us to become so confident in your nearness to us that we can forego the fantastic to trust in the sacred ordinary that surrounds us at all times. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray.
Speaker 1:Amen. Okay. Today we have sacred small moments learning to notice God, the problem with power imbalances and why we need to learn to listen to each other's stories. But before we jump into chapter 39, there is one little piece here that I didn't have time to cover last week. And I think it's this really neat little touch just before we follow Joseph into Egypt.
Speaker 1:At the end of chapter 37, after his brothers decide not to kill him and instead to sell him to slave traders, the text says that these traders, these merchants have camels that are loaded with spices, balm, and myrrh. And Bobby pointed this out, this somewhat conspicuous detail last week that just as Joseph is about to be sold to slavers, we get this mention of spices and balm and myrrh. All of which are frequently associated with God's provision and grace throughout the scriptures. Now for example, Jeremiah eight says, is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Speaker 1:Why is there no healing for the wound of my people? And here for Joseph, there seems to be in some small way some healing. And so I looked this up and I found an ancient Midrash from the fifth century where the rabbi writes that these spices and balms, they indicate a providential amelioration of Joseph's suffering on the road to Egypt. And I really like this idea that it is okay to notice the divine in small moments of beauty even when things are hard. And things might be hard for you right now.
Speaker 1:But for you to notice what is good near you now, that is not naive, it's actually essential. So learn to look for small moments of beauty and especially when things are hard, don't stop looking for them. Now, today, we pick up the story in chapter 39. And there in verse one, we read, now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian, who was one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.
Speaker 1:And if you go back to the end of chapter 37, you get exactly the same information. So this is the writer reminding us of where we left off, but the writer's also setting the stage here. Joseph has been taken to Egypt, and a man named Potiphar, an Egyptian, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard has bought him. And all of this sort of redundant repetition is here to remind us that Joseph is a slave now. He's in a new land, someone else's land.
Speaker 1:Potiphar has bought him. That name means he whom the god Ra has given, and the god Ra has given this man to work directly with the king, and he is the captain of the guard. And all of this is telling us that Joseph has fallen very far down the food chain. Now in one sense, we might imagine that it's nice to be a slave in the richest house on the block, but this is reminding us that Joseph is completely expendable in his new circumstance. And we have to remember this when we talk about slavery in the bible Because it can all feel very distant and therefore very antiseptic to us.
Speaker 1:Like, we almost sort of just glide over these references without recognizing the injustice and the inhumanity and the cruelty that was inherent in these practices. And as we're gonna see today, Joseph has no access to autonomy over his body or a fair trial. He has no access to justice in any sense of how we might understand those ideas today. And so we should not sanitize our reading of these stories as we go. But as we read, there is also something fascinating here.
Speaker 1:Because in verse two, we get our first reference to God anywhere in the story. Says that the Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. Now that Lord, all in capitals there, that is the Hebrew name Yahweh which is the divine name for God. And I don't know if you've noticed this but so far in this story we have not seen God anywhere at all. We've seen some dreams and we've seen a hint that maybe God is present to Joseph as he's sold into slavery but neither God, which is the Hebrew Elohim, or the divine name Yahweh, which we see here have appeared anywhere in the story up to this point.
Speaker 1:And part of what's interesting is that this is going to be the only time that the divine name shows up anywhere in the story. It's used a number of times here in this chapter, but that's it actually. And I think what's really compelling about this is that this chapter seems to be the real low point of the entire Joseph narrative. You know, things are bad. He's just been sold into slavery, but as we're gonna see today, just when things start to look up, they take a turn for the even worse.
Speaker 1:But look at the contrast now with the last couple weeks. In the story of the dreams, there's no mention of God. In the story of his betrayal and sale, there's no mention of God. But now, as we start to hit bottom with Joseph, it's here that we notice the divine. And maybe you resonate with that.
Speaker 1:That sometimes you notice God when you need God the most. And it's actually fascinating because more literally what the Hebrew says is something like, and the Lord was with Joseph and he was with success, and he was with the house of his master in Egypt. And that repetition is really important because it's reinforcing God's presence with Joseph in the story, but at the same time, this phrase and he was with, in Hebrew that's pronounced Vayahi. And a lot of Jewish scholars over the years have noticed how similar Vayahi sounds to Yahweh. And so what you get when you read is Yahweh, and it's this sort of soothing repetition of sounds that remind us of the divine presence that surrounds Joseph in the story.
Speaker 1:And maybe you have memories or songs or sounds and smells that remind you of God near you. And it's good to go back to those memories when you need them. Ritual and memory, these are important parts of how we experience the sacred around us. But it also seems that maybe part of what the author wants us to understand here is that often times we only notice God on the other side of a difficult situation. Now, I don't wanna be as trite here as to quote that footprints in the sand poem, and I don't wanna tell you that everything is gonna be okay and God will carry you and one day when you look back you'll notice so there's nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1:But I do think there's something to this. It's interesting to me that God isn't mentioned in the story of Joseph and his dreams. Because sometimes when things are going really well for me, I forget about God too. And I feel like I don't need God and I begin to imagine that my dreams and God's dreams are actually one in the same. And it's interesting to me that God isn't mentioned in the story of Joseph waiting helplessly in a cistern to find out what his brothers are going to do with him.
Speaker 1:Because sometimes when I struggle, I often forget about God as well. And I feel like God has abandoned me, and I wonder if my dreams matter at all as if God has deserted me. Because sometimes what happens is I universalize the particular moment that I'm experiencing. So if things are good, then they'll always be good and I don't need God. And if things are bad, then they'll always be bad because God has abandoned me.
Speaker 1:And what happens is I fall into this trap of imagining that what I'm experiencing right now in this moment is all that I will ever experience again. And yet sometimes what I find is that like Joseph, it's these liminal moments when I have time to look back when I notice God most fully. Now there is a time to be exactly where you are. And when you have lost someone or when a relationship has ended, there's a time to mourn, and telling someone to move on before they are ready is never helpful. So don't do that to each other.
Speaker 1:But then there is that fine line where sometimes we get stuck here and we forget about there. And we forget that the story of God is about movement. And we forget that God is always ahead of us calling us forward, and we forget that even this too shall pass. And I think as we read, we're supposed to sort of all of a sudden notice God here in this part of the story and then say to ourselves, oh, wait a minute. I kinda do that too sometimes, don't I?
Speaker 1:And I miss God in all the other moments when the divine has always been near me, surrounding me with love, whether I noticed it or not. And so sometimes, when you can't see God in the story, whether that's reading your bible or looking at your life, sometimes that's a sign to slow down and take another look. Now, when his master saw that the Lord was with him and the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household and he entrusted to his care everything that he owned. With Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except for the food that he ate.
Speaker 1:Now, just for fun here, the food that he ate, that's a reference to his wife and this is a euphemism for sex. And I know that sounds odd, but just think about all the euphemisms we have in English for our favorite pastime, and it might not seem so strange anymore. But from a literary perspective, what's happening here is a little bit of foreshadowing. This is telling us about how the story is going to unfold, and we'll see it come back. However, as far as slavery goes, things are working out pretty well for Joseph at this point.
Speaker 1:Right? But as we're gonna see, the rug can get pulled out very quickly when you are vulnerable. And I actually think this is a really important part of the story. After Joseph, the Israelites are gonna stay in Egypt. And they are going to become enslaved in Egypt like Joseph.
Speaker 1:And for a time things are going to go well and the Hebrews are going to flourish, but eventually the pharaoh is going to turn on them. This is the problem with benevolent imbalances of power. When one person or one group or one side of any relationship has a disproportionate control of the power no matter how magnanimously it's used. It's always at risk of going bad. And look, that goes for pastors who think their church is their own little fiefdom to run.
Speaker 1:And that goes for partners who think their spouse is theirs to control. That goes for parents who want to turn their children into everything they ever wanted to be. When our relationships are based inherently on an imbalance of power where one side has no recourse for their story to be told, then we are always one misunderstanding away from disaster no matter how healthy we appear in the moment. And look, I'm not saying that there's no place for authority in the world. Leadership is important, and we need structure in our organizations.
Speaker 1:If you're a parent, you're still gonna need to set boundaries and enforce the rules. And if your goal is to be a friend more than a parent for your kids, then at some point, that's going to be problematic for you. But if your idea of leadership and your idea of partnering and parenting, if your idea of authority is, I set the rules and you fall in line, then that is a toxic imbalance of power that will inevitably lead to something terrible. That's exactly what we see here. The text says that Joseph was well built and handsome.
Speaker 1:And after a while, his master's wife took note of Joseph and said, come to bed with me. Now last week, I talked about how it's at least possible that part of the problem Joseph's brothers had with him was that he didn't fit within their expectations of masculinity within that ancient Semitic culture. But here in Egypt, Joseph is very well received. Literally, the description here is something like he was beautiful in form and beautiful in appearance. Part of what we see here is that beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.
Speaker 1:For example here, my wife Rachel will regularly refer to me as handsome and well built in common conversation with her friends, and it's not your place to disabuse her of that perception of the world. That's hers, and it's important to her. So leave that alone. But with that obvious observation out of the way, this section is still really interesting here. Because appearance is pretty straightforward, but form is actually a little more difficult though.
Speaker 1:The Hebrew word here is actually used to describe Joseph's mother as having a lovely figure earlier in the story. And it's used again later in Judges to describe the curves of a river. But the basic meaning of the word is to outline the shape of something. In fact, in Isaiah, it's used to describe how a carpenter measures with a line and then outlines with a marker and then roughs out a shape with a chisel before fashioning a piece of art out of wood. And the description there is actually about making an idol in the form of a god.
Speaker 1:So it's really about this idea of representing something in the world. Not just being beautiful in appearance and pleasing to look at, it's representing the essence of something. And so it's really interesting to think about the ways in which our perception of categories can shift. Where Joseph didn't fit within the categories of masculinity that his brothers had been given here in Egypt, he is the very form of a man. Sometimes we do a lot of damage to ourselves trying to fit ourselves into the forms that someone else has in mind for us instead of learning how to live out of who we are actually formed to be.
Speaker 1:But he refused. With me in charge he told her, my master does not concern himself with anything in the house. Everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except for you.
Speaker 1:There's that callback to Potiphar concerning himself with nothing but the food he ate. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God? And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. Well, one day, he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants were inside. She caught him by the cloak and said, come to bed with me, but he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.
Speaker 1:She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. And then she told him this story. That Hebrew slave that you brought us came to make sport of me, but as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house. And when his master heard the story his wife had told him he burned with anger. Joseph's master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined.
Speaker 1:But while Joseph was there in prison, the Lord was with him. He showed him kindness. And again, we have this appearance of Yahweh again here in the story at the moment of deepest depth. But a few things here. And let's just name the big one.
Speaker 1:This is a story about a woman making false accusations against a man. And that is a delicate story to be talking about right now. I don't know if anyone has ever told you the bible is outdated and irrelevant and has nothing to say to modern audiences, but a couple things here before we come back to the big one. First, Joseph says, I can't do this because it would hurt Potiphar, it feels wrong, and it would be a sin against God. And I actually think this is a really helpful little exercise that Joseph runs through in his mind.
Speaker 1:If it feels wrong, it's probably wrong. If it hurts someone, it's definitely wrong. And when it's wrong, it will move you in the opposite direction of the God that you are seeking to encounter in your life. And any one of these are good reasons to try to find another way forward, but all of them together is a really good signal that you should be looking for a different path. Next, and this one's just for free.
Speaker 1:But when Potiphar's wife tries to convince Joseph to sleep with her, the English says she spoke to Joseph day after day. But the phrase in Hebrew here is actually one word. It's the word cadabra. Debar is the word for speaking, but kadabra is the word for repeating something over and over again. And as I say that word a couple times, you might already be thinking about another word, a somewhat seasonally appropriate word, and that's abracadabra.
Speaker 1:Well, abracadabra actually comes from Hebrew Aramaic roots. The avra on the front comes from the Hebrew Av, which means father and cadabra is to speak over and over again. So the idea is that the father speaks things into existence over and over. Now there's been all kinds of meaning added to that over the years. Lots of hocus pocus but here it's interesting to think about how our words conjure something in someone else.
Speaker 1:And how we can use our words for good, certainly for evil. Because when you speak negativity to someone or negativity to yourself and you do it over and over again, it's not magic, but it will inevitably sink in. But that also means that in the same way when we speak goodness and light and grace and peace and love and we do that over and over and over again no matter what is returned to us, then that will help change the world. Because good words matter. But we now have to deal with the real crux of this story, and that is women making false accusations against men.
Speaker 1:And we live in a world right now where women are finally being encouraged to speak out against injustice. And we are finally as a culture starting to pay attention to those stories and you will hear slogans like believe women and trust women and this could be on its surface read as a counter narrative to that movement. One that is meant to remind us that women, just like men, can be duplicitous and deceitful, and that accusations against men, especially men we like, should be at the very least taken with a grain of salt. And I'm not gonna pretend that women never lie, but I will say that to read this story in that way would be to completely miss the point. Because everything in this tale has been leading us to notice the structural imbalances of power in the story.
Speaker 1:There's a father who prefers one son over the others. There's brothers who physically overpower their smaller sibling. There's a boy sold into slavery to a powerful official. There's a slave who has no legal autonomy over his body or sexuality, accused of an attempted rape and given no ability to defend himself against that. What that means is that this is not a story about a woman who makes a false accusation.
Speaker 1:This is a story about the significance of those who have not been given boys. And to arbitrarily take the categories from this story and then map them onto our experience of the world with no awareness of the intersectionality that shapes our world is to completely miss the point of the story. Because this story has been very carefully designed to get you to listen to those you normally would not listen to. And maybe for some of us that means different people. Maybe we have not listened to women.
Speaker 1:And maybe we have not listened to First Nations. And maybe we have not listened to prisoners and the poor and the elderly. And maybe we, like Joseph, have been the ones who have not been listened to before. And I'm sorry for all the times that I have not listened well to your story. But this is the challenge of the story that we might become aware of and then break through and then begin the long slow work of dismantling all of the imbalances that we place structurally around ourselves.
Speaker 1:Because here in this story, Joseph becomes the stand in for any person, every person who has ever been victimized by power. Those whose bodies were objectified, those whose wishes were ignored, those who were cast aside because they did not cooperate with power. And if your story needs to be heard, may you hear that God is listening today. And may those of us who hear the Joseph story become the kind of community where your story can become known. But then for those of us who have perhaps glimpsed something of the stories that surround us and go unnoticed every day here.
Speaker 1:May we now become attuned to the voice of the spirit speaking for those who have not yet been heard. And might we, like Joseph, run from that injustice so that we can all partner with the God who makes all things new. Because that starts by listening to each other's stories. Let's pray. God, as we are reminded today of systems of injustice and imbalance that dehumanize our neighbors, as we remember moments where our stories have not been heard, As we acknowledge moments where we did not listen well.
Speaker 1:As we mourn today. The white supremacy that has again crawled from the pit to take the lives of 11 Jewish people worshiping in Pennsylvania this weekend. Right? We come to recognize all of the ways that we participate in and we benefit from and we are crushed by systems that strip us of our humanity. Grant, oh God, that your holy and life giving spirit may so move in every human heart.
Speaker 1:That barriers which divide us might crumble, suspicions disappear, hatred cease that our divisions might be healed. Also that we may live in justice and peace in the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.